The Summer King Bundle 3 Stories - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,14

the space. It took two towelettes to remove all the makeup on my face, but after a handful of moments, it was my face staring back at me in the mirror.

Blonde hair fell limply around cheeks that were pink from all the scrubbing. Faint shadows clung to the skin under eyes that reminded me of my mother. They were wide-set and brown. Someone once called them doe eyes, and I think they might’ve been suggesting that my eyes gave them the impression of a deer in headlights. Right now, that would be accurate. I stared at myself like I didn’t recognize anything about my own face. My gaze lowered, to where my lips were slightly parted and then lower still.

Pale blue marks had formed on either side of my throat.

Without having to try, I heard the sound the Prince had made when he’d tipped my head back. Smoothing my fingers over the faint bruises, I wondered if the Prince had seen them. Was that why he’d… growled?

What in the hell was the Prince even doing at Flux?

And I couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t struck back at me. He could’ve. I’d kicked him. Swung a chair at him. Hit him, and all he did was restrain me and then told me to leave. He’d been pissed, that much I was sure of, but he didn’t try to hurt me.

Steam crept across the mirror, blurring my reflection as I pulled my hand away from my throat. When I’d left the room, there hadn’t been a single fae in the alcove on the second floor. The couches and chairs were empty. There wasn’t even a human in sight. The Prince had done something to the fae.

I didn’t think he’d warned them off.

He’d taken them out, and that made sense. The fae that frequented Flux were the Winter fae, the enemy of the Summer Court and humans, but what didn’t make sense was why he was looking for Tobias.

I knew why I’d been there. Just like I knew I would go back to Flux, because eventually the remaining two fae would make an appearance. They always did, and I would do the same thing I’d done tonight. Watch them. Learn their habits. Strike fast and get out, hopefully without The Prince showing up. I would kill them or die trying, and there was a good chance that would happen, because one of the two remaining fae was an Ancient.

And he’d been the cruelest, the sickest.

I shuddered as I gripped the sink. Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply and then held my breath a second before the all-too-familiar thought blasted forward, shoving everything else out of the way.

This isn’t who you are.

Stalking the fae and putting myself in ridiculously dangerous positions wasn’t who I used to be. That was who I’d wanted to be, but what I had become was some kind of twisted version of that.

Being consumed with vengeance was something I never thought I’d experience, but I was knee-deep in it and I wasn’t coming out anytime soon.

Who I used to be was a woman I could barely remember. I’d once thought that my life had changed when I was twelve and that my life could never be that rattled again. I’d foolishly believed that every human had a cap to what kind of tragedy they’d experience, and I’d already had my fair share. My father had died in the line of duty, as many Order members did, before I could even form one memory of the man. My mom had been brutalized but survived to never be a hundred percent the same again. I’d watched friends die in the battle against the fae, and naïvely, stupidly thought that we were free and clear, because how could anything else happen to me or my mother? We’d experienced enough tragedy to last a lifetime. God couldn’t be that cruel to deliver yet another soul-crushing blow.

I’d been so wrong.

Thinking back to the night of the attack, I wondered if I had misjudged the reason for Mom being antsy. Maybe it wasn’t a sign that she was about to have another episode. Maybe it was some kind of primal instinct had told her what was coming that night. What if she had known that those were the last hours of her life?

Guilt churned, flooding the pit of my stomach with acid as I walked myself back through the night. Our shouts of surprise and screams of pain had been quickly silenced. They’d swarmed us